Cheetahs get a lot of props for being quick, but the title of world's fastest animal for its size -- which is a far fairer measure of its speed -- goes to the Southern California mite, Paratarsotomus macropalpis. Researchers at Pomona, Pitzer and Harvey Mudd college documented this new record with high-speed cameras, filming the sesame seed-sized insects as they scurried across sidewalks in Claremont, California. Although these tiny creatures' legs are invisible to the human eye, the researchers found that they nonetheless scuttle along at about 322 body lengths per second. For a human, that would be the equivalent of running 1,300 miles per hour. Meanwhile, a cheetah moves at a measly 16 body lengths per second. "First I thought, ‘Wow, that can't be true,'" said researcher Samuel Rubin, an undergraduate in physics at Pitzer who presented this research at the 2014 Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego. The previous record holder for speed was the Australian tiger beetle, which raced along at less than half a mite's speed at 171 body lengths per second. In other words, give those mites a medal!